Beyond the colonies of cattle

Rilwan

2 months ago

Herdsmen

In those days, one of my lecturers was fond of making an issue out of Nigerians’ love for ‘high sounding yet meaningless patter’ in an endless attempt to show off. His words come to mind as I settle down to digest the latest solution that the Federal Government is proposing as a perfect answer to ending the perennial bloody clashes between herdsmen and farmers—colonies for cattle. Suddenly and from the blues, the government woke up to realise that it has done little or nothing to help the cause of these fully armed so-called herdsmen who have been on a slaughtering binge of human lives in the last few years. There is hardly any part of the country that these seemingly unknown killers have not inflicted pain and anguish with ferocious equanimity, especially in communities that dare question the impunity with which they allow their cattle to graze and destroy farmlands. That, if we must knock the truth on its head, is the crux of a crisis that continues to take lives daily with the latest being the mindless bloodletting in two local government areas in Benue State.

With over 80 lives lost to the pogrom and with tongues wagging that President Muhammadu Buhari, being a Fulani, was playing the ostrich without any signs that a decisive action would be taken to stop the dastardly act, it was not surprising that the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, an influential Benue indigene, would have to lend his voice to the raging debate one way or the other. But rather than douse the tension or erase the belief in some quarters that the President was passively shielding his kinsmen from arrest and prosecution over the killings, Audu’s intervention merely added to the confusion. Standing on the threshold of political correctness which oftentimes defers to vacuous prognosis, Ogbeh would pick his examples from Europe where every farmed cow gets, according to him, six Euros per day. He said while rice, maize and cocoa farmers in the country enjoy some sort of subsidy from the government, nothing significant has been done for livestock development. Unfortunately, that’s the category the herdsmen fall into.

And then, Ogbeh’s clincher: “We have done next to nothing for the cattle-rearer and, as a result, his operation has become a threat to the existence of our farmers. The government is planning a programme called cattle colonists, not ranches but colonists where, at least, 5000 hectares of land would be made available, adequate water; adequate pasture would be made available. We also want to stop cattle-rearers from roaming. The cattle will be provided with water and adequate security by rangers, adequate pasture milk collection even security from rustlers to enable them live a normal life. This has been done in India, Ethiopia and Brazil.”

Honestly, I can understand the frustration of the Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, when he said he couldn’t grasp what Ogbeh meant by colonies for cattle herders. I don’t too. If it is not ranching, what then is this colony slang all about? Would it be restricted to a particular geo-political zone or would the colonies be set up in whichever fertile ground or communities that these wandering and armed herdsmen pick as veritable grounds for ‘colonization’, in the interest of their cattle? What guarantee do we have that those who have based their continuous movement on tradition and customs would accept this offer of cattle colonies with rangers in charge of security when they have learnt to waste human lives in exchange for any rustled or killed cow as it was the case in Benue?

I have tried, without much success, to identify a marked distinction between Ogbeh’s colony of cattle and ranching going by Google’s description of the word. By definition, ranching is “an establishment maintained for raising livestock under range conditions” or “a large farm used primarily to raise one kind of crop or animal (Western USA and Canada).” If Ogbeh says 5000 hectares of land would be made available for the cattle colonists, shouldn’t it be commonsensical that this is ranching by another name even if the security personnel in the colonists would be addressed as rangers? How much longer will we continue to dwell on the dispatch of meaningless patter to describe our impotence in handling issues that require our immediate and urgent attention?

Possibly, cattle colonies as grasped by Ogbeh may just be an adoption of whatever stretch of land for cattle-rearers’ use without paying for same – just the way colonialists took up vast stretches of land across Africa and carved them up whimsically. Ranching may as well, imply paying for a determined size of land under the economic terms dictated by commerce, economics and the principles of capitalism – you pay before you own. We really don’t know how this would work for now.

Yet, beyond all the verbose even if sometimes mendacious arguments from both sides of the divide on what moniker to give the place where the excesses of these herdsmen would be curbed, the government in a seeming haste to placate the vicious killers in the midst of this set of people should summon the courage to deal with the criminality embedded in their action in accordance with the law of the land. Ogbeh’s tendentious excuse that many years of neglect of the herdsmen’s travails resulted in the harvest of blood in the land does not, in any way, vitiate the fact that these persons must face the full wrath of the law. It is, to say the least, sickening that these killer herdsmen have justified their insane action on the alleged rustling of 1000 cattle in Benue State. And then you ask, how many more lives would they snuff out that would equate the monetary value of the somewhat priceless cattle?

The Buhari government will continue to be peddled with stones, public odium and indecent flak if it keeps dangling the carrot before these demented killers instead of wielding the stick in response to ferocious attacks by the herdsmen. The same law should apply to anyone that takes the law into his hands by attacking the herdsmen. In this particular matter, the question has been asked: Where is the stick in Ogbeh’s intervention? In those years when rice, maize and cocoa were farmed without any subsidy, did the hapless farmers resort to any violence-induced self-help? Under whose authority did the herdsmen derive the power to ravage farmlands – all in the name of getting feed and water for their cattle? And what gives Ogbeh the assurance that these persons who have rejected all efforts to station them in areas where they wouldn’t have to trample on the constitutionally guaranteed rights of others would buy into his cattle colonies idea?

The riotous angst in the Presidential Villa notwithstanding, the uncomfortable truth is that the buck stops on Buhari’s desk. That’s what he signed for when he became President. And so, it is not enough for him to chastise those linking the conflict to ethnic cleansing or religious war. It doesn’t help either that he sees the barrage of criticisms against his action or inaction as “simplistic reductionism.” By now, we should be tired of blowing grammar to the wind as the cloud of gloom grips the land. Now that the herdsmen have turned their weapons against the officers of the law with the reported slaughtering of two police officers and inflicting life-threatening injuries on another, it is expected that the nation’s security apparatchik would carry out Buhari’s order to haunt these devilish men down with the same dose of viciousness they have visited on thousands of our citizens.

A change from eternal roaming of cattle herds across the country should be a welcome idea. Ranching is even a better option if those involved would freely subscribe to it without scrounging up extraneous factors and primordial fallacies that would frustrate efforts being made to implement it. But, in doing this, nothing should be done to gloss over the fact that the blood of those felled in the insensate tragedy deserves justice. It is the least the country owes them as we hope that, someday, the herds of cattle would be tamed within a colony under the firm grip of humane ranchers. In the end, what should concern us is that Nigerian lives, regardless of creed, colour or religion, matter. Is that now why we have a constituted authority in place?